The Right Stuff (1983)

October 21, 1983

FILM: 'RIGHT STUFF,' ON ASTRONAUTS

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: October 21, 1983

''THE RIGHT STUFF,'' Philip Kaufman's rousing, funny screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book about Project Mercury and America's first astronauts, is probably the brightest and the best rookie/cadet movie ever made, though the rookies and cadets are seasoned pilots and officers.

The film almost makes one glad to be alive in spite of famines, wars and even ''the greenhouse effect,'' which, if the Environmental Protection Agency is correct, means that the entire earth is inside its own space capsule that's rapidly overheating. ''The Right Stuff'' is full of short-term pleasures that yield to doubts only after the film is over.

Although the film, which opens today at the Beekman and other theaters, focuses mainly on the care, feeding, training and exploitation of the astronauts, its most commanding figure is not an astronaut but a great test pilot, Chuck Yeager, who exemplifies everything represented by the title.

Mr. Yeager, who in 1947 became the first man in the world to break the sound barrier, was not a member of Project Mercury but his story, in the film as in the book, more or less frames those of the astronauts. Systematically testing himself as well as his planes or, in the jargon of the space trade, ''pushing the outside of the envelope,'' Mr. Yeager was the man against whom any pilot who thought he had the right stuff measured himself.

As played by Sam Shepard, the tall, lanky playright-actor, the film's Chuck Yeager seems also to personify the reason and sanity that came close to being lost in the United States's hysterical drive first to catch up with the Soviet Union's space program and then to surpass it. Both as the character he plays and as an ironic screen presence, Mr. Shepard gives the film much well-needed heft. He is its center of gravity.

The three astronauts who come most vividly to life in the film are John Glenn (Ed Harris), the ''clean Marine'' who made this country's first successful orbital flight (and who today is the Democratic Senator from Ohio seeking his party's Presidential nomination); Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), the first American to ride a space capsule in suborbital flight, and Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), the comically self-confident astronaut whose successful orbital flight brought Project Mercury to its conclusion.

Much was made of Mr. Wolfe's accomplishment in finding the astronauts' idiosyncrasies that give the lie to the handsome, cookie-cutter profiles that were promoted, especially in Life magazine, during the life of Project Mercury in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Like the book, the movie strips away the nonsense to find - underneath the nonsense - men who are not really much different from their official portraits. It's true that not all of the other astronauts were taken by the pieties that flowed so effortlessly from John Glenn's lips during his public appearances publicizing Project Mercury. It's also true that we see Alan Shepard violently objecting when Glenn attempts to scold the other astronauts for hell-raising and womanizing after hours. The astronauts use four-letter words and tell scatalogical jokes. We are even given indications that the marriage of Gordon and Trudy Cooper (Pamela Reed) is not as happy as it might be.

Yet these men remain virtually flawless heroes, almost too good, decent and brave to be true, and it's a measure of how successful the movie is that one is inclined to believe it. The movie doesn't say it but it's difficult to look at ''The Right Stuff'' without thinking that they represent the last gasp of 19th century American WASPdom.

Because they are generally so perfect, the movie's most appealing astronaut is Gus Grissom, (Fred Ward), who made Project Mercury's second suborbital flight, the one that ended in something of a mess when the capsule's hatch was prematurely blown and the capsule lost. Does or doesn't Gus Grissom have the right stuff? This impertinent question keeps the movie from becoming the unadulterated paean to American heroism and know-how it might otherwise have been.

''The Right Stuff'' is very long - over three hours - but it has to be to cover the ground and space it must. Mr. Kaufman's screenplay is very efficient in the way it introduces so many characters and then crosscuts among them without confusion or repetition. The domestic lives of John Glenn, Gordon Cooper and Gus Grissom are movingly detailed. Best of all, the flight footage is remarkably convincing, from Shepard's first suborbital flight, when a full bladder threatened the entire operation, through Glenn's three orbits of the earth, and his perilous decent, and, finally, Chuck Yeager's last flight, his near-fatal attempt to set a new speed record in the NF-104 airplane.

Some things are not so good. The early desert sequences at Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base, are so poetically photographed one gets the impression that the sun seldom sets in this desert but hangs always at 5 P.M. There is a perfunctory, service- comedy jokiness about urine specimens and barium enemas during flight training. The movie sees all Government officials as idiots, especially a couple of recruiters played by Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer. Though President Eisenhower is treated with a sort of dim respect, Lyndon B. Johnson, seen first as the Senate Majority Leader and then as Vice President, is made to look like a publicity-seeking buffoon. As played by Donald Moffat, who looks enough like the late politician to make a career impersonating him in revues, the movie's Lyndon Johnson is a character taken out of context.

More troublesome is the gingerly way the movie deals with the exploitation of the astronauts, particularly their deal with Time Inc. that gave Life magazine exclusive rights to their stories. Is one correct in assuming that the astronauts saw this as simply their due, their financial reward for celebrityhood, another glorious benefit provided by this land of opportunity? One can't be sure.

Very clear, however, is the meaning of the final sequence in which the film cross-cuts between the heroic Chuck Yeager, testing his NF-104 over the California desert, and the astronauts in Texas, captured symbols of heroism, attending a gaudy, Lyndon Johnson-hosted barbecue that stars them alongside Sally Rand, the fan dancer.